These were actually done last night, but it was too dark to take pictures. And the pictures I took this morning aren’t all that great, but I wanted to have them “modeled” by my helpers.

Get it? Fraternal Twin Quilts? The same, but not the same?

I guess it helps to know that the boys are Fraternal Twins. (Speaking of which, I never did write any more posts about having twins, did I? I’ll have to remedy that).

Excuse all that stuff you can see laying around in the background. And the Be Merry sign in the window.

Honey, I found another Christmas deco that didn’t get put away.

We had our Christmas countdown calendar (frozen on 7 days til Christmas) on the wall until a few days ago.

The pictures I took this morning weren’t great. The boys had no interest in helping me.

But I wanted to show you what the original picture that I showed above looks like:

I still have a lot to do to figure out how to get the picture coming straight out of the camera (SOOC) to look good, but I feel like I’ve been let into a secret society now that I’ve figured out to make the pictures I do take look better.

Here’s the edited picture again:

And then the two side by side:

(to see it larger, click on the picture, then click on ALL SIZES (up above the picture) which will give you different size options to look at)

I did several things to this picture, including sharpening it, running a noise reduction filter, and running an action called Boost, from The Pioneer Woman.

My aim is not professional photography, or doing lots of fancy touch-ups…and I’m not saying the fnial result is great, but it sure is a lot brighter and sharper. Of course, I’m also something of a geek (OK, a LOT geek), and this sort of thing thrills me in the core of my geekiness.

Time for my inner geek to go shower and get breakfast and get moving. Have a great day!

Mercifully, we had a warming up today, and temps are currently +2 (F). Still cold, but somehow, the fact that it is ABOVE zero, makes it seem significantly warmer.

Following on from yesterday’s photo, today I thought I’d show off the finished Scorpion robot, being put through some trials. It wouldn’t do what Will wanted, but after trying several different things he said “Oh! I know what it is!” And then he hopped off and headed back to the computer to fix his program. I was pretty proud of him for persevering. I felt bad that I had to drag him away and take him to school!

Mark and I are headed to a movie in a bit. I’d rather stay home and watch the premier of Battlestar Galactica, but alas, I do not have cable and can’t watch it until it’s available online. Pity me, I’m quite deprived.

Mark had the Beatles going tonight at supper. I was quietly singing along (how can you NOT sing this one???)…

all you need is love…

all you need is love…

And then Joe asked me to stop…(his timing was impeccable)…

ALL YOU NEED IS LO-OVE! LOVE IS ALL YOU NEED!

I adore driving them crazy.

Speaking of them:

Part of my goal with these photos is to learn more about Photoshop, so I dinked around for awhile with Actions and such-like and decided I liked the look of this action from the Pioneer Woman. That wall in the background is actually very yellow. I think it’s cool.

I think I’ve mentioned before that Mark has been helping to coach our elementary school’s Lego League Team. The team gets to go to the state competition on Saturday, which is quite exciting. Santa brought Will, Joe and Mark a Lego Mindstorm set of their very own, and tonight they decided to try to build the Scorpion Robot. I don’t know how far they got, but they were having fun. That’s Katie sitting on Mark’s lap, keeping an eye on everything. Or maybe she was sleeping…

Remember how I realized in a previous post that the pictures I had thought I had taken yesterday were probably non-existant? Well, I was right. Duh. The above picture is a fake. It’s not even precisely the same as what I had taken yesterday. The picture I really wanted to use was a spread out stack of about 30 of my books, waiting to be shipped. I couldn’t retake their picture because…they got shipped. So, a stack of covers will have to suffice. It’s hard for me to imagine how many copies of those covers and books I’ve printed and punched and bound and shipped over the last 2.5 years. A lot.

And with this one, I’m now caught up on this week’s pictures. I was going to use the frosted window picture, but decided that I’m ignoring the weather right now, and would rather remember this quilt. I somewhat surreptitiously posted a link to these pictures the other day, so in case you missed them, more pics of this can be found at this post. I am extremely happy with how this quilt has turned out. I really like it when things turn out the way you expect them to.

As of this moment, school has posted a 2 hour delay. It is just so *bad word* cold out there, and is supposed to stay that way. It’d be nice if they could actually go to school, but we’ll see what happens.

Part of Lucy’s birthday gift this year was a set of needles and a skein of yarn. She’s finally been able to join me for her first knitting lesson, and she caught on right away!

Joe decided he wanted to knit, too, so he grabbed some needles and a skein of yarn and got busy. He had had a lesson from Gramma Reed awhile ago, and he remembered right quick what to do.

Will decided not to knit. He did this instead:

On her way out the door, Lucy tried to convince her father that (a) she needed another skein of yarn in case…she needed to cast on a new project? and (b) that she needed the measuring tape with the cool case that she’s been eyeing for months.

TTFN-

Suzanne

p.s. today’s title isn’t a song lyric or title, I’m stretching myself to include, well, whatever I want to. At any rate, this is a poem/chant/mnemonic you can use to help kids (or adults!) remember the steps of the knit stitch:

In through the front door,
Once around the back.
Peek through the window
And off jumps Jack!